Have a behavioral addiction, like compulsive gambling, sex addiction or internet addiction? Learn an easy to follow 4-step program that may help you regain control.

You can teach your brain to stop sending messages of craving and need - it’s going to take time and effort, but according to
Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz and his 4 Step Program, through conscious awareness you can teach your mind to retrain your
brain!

Combining mindfulness techniques of conscious awareness and
cognitive behavior techniques of thought and behavioral change, the 4 Steps
program is effective in helping you to realize 2 goals:

Overcoming immediate urges to engage in a destructive
behavior

Retraining your brain through conscious awareness so that
urges weaken and occur less frequently over time

The philosophy behind the program is that your mind and your
brain are not the same. Your brain influences your thoughts (your mind) and
through this it can influence behaviors (such as drinking, or gambling etc.).

However, the same process can occur in reverse – your mind
can also influence and change your brain and in doing so can help keep you from
behaviors you feel to be negative. Through directed, intentional and conscious
thinking (mindfulness) you can retrain your brain to stop sending harmful
messages to your mind.

When your brain sends an urge message and you give into it –
you strengthen the brain pattern

When your brain sends an urge message and you fight it – you
also strengthen that brain pattern

But when your brain sends an urge message and you
acknowledge it, recognize its true source and re-label it as a false and
harmful message – you weaken the brain pattern

Over time, as you practice the 4 Steps and as you deal
intentionally with urges, you break the power of these false messages from your
brain.

Here’s how it works:

The 4 Steps to Breaking Free from Behavioral Addiction

Relabel

Reattribute

Refocus

Revalue

Step One: "Relabel"

The first step in the 4 step program is to relabel negative
cravings or urges and to do this in a very deliberate and conscious way.

Without conscious awareness, cravings from the brain to the
mind are often interpreted as a ‘need’ – for example, “I need to gamble right
now” or “I need a chocolate bar right now”.

Of course, a craving for chocolate is not really a true
‘need’ and no one has ever died from delaying a session of gambling! However,
because we pay only superficial attention to the craving and instead focus
great attention on our interpretation of the craving – our perceived need to go
do something – we lose perspective on the true nature of what’s occurring and
we give far more power to cravings and urges then they rightfully deserve.

When you turn your conscious attention onto the reality of
the craving, however, you remove much of its power.

When you feel an urge or a craving to engage in some sort of
negative act, instead of wasting energy fighting to suppress the craving, turn your attention
like a spotlight onto the craving itself.

You want to look at the craving from the perspective of an impartial
outsider observing something at a distance and tell yourself that what you’re
experiencing is not a true need but rather a negative craving that will lead to
unhappiness. Don’t try to deny or suppress the craving, feel it – but literally
talk to yourself, and deliberately and assertively relabel what you are
feeling:

“This is not a true need I’m feeling and I don’t have to act
on it. This is just a craving and the need I feel right now is not real and it
will pass in a few minutes, though it may come back again.”1

Remember that your relabeling these cravings will not make
them go away (right away)*. These cravings come from a biological source (the
brain) that is beyond your immediate control – what you can control, however,
is how you come to interpret and respond to these cravings.2

*With repetition, controlling your response to cravings will
reduce their intensity and frequency.

Step Two: "Reattribute"

Dr. Schwartz wrote a book on the use of the Four Steps
entitled, ‘You Are Not Your Brain’, and the title of the book effectively
captures the philosophy of the program and especially the importance of the
second step.

That you are not your brain means that though your brain may
send messages, you do not have to act on them.

When you experience a craving, as you relabel it and
recognize it as an artificial need, you need to also reattribute the source of
the craving. You again literally tell yourself that:

This craving is coming from my brain

Some of my neurochemistry and brain function is impaired due
to my addiction (or OCD or compulsive disorder) and this is why I feel a
craving. My brain is sending me false messages

I can ride this craving like a wave and it will fade away,
but another one will come up sooner or later, and when it does, I will relabel
it and reattribute it yet again. I do not have to listen to the false messages
sent by a brain that is not working as it should.

If I give in to this craving it will make the craving go
away for a short time but it will make the cravings I feel in the future even
stronger. If I pay attention, relabel and reattribute and choose not to give in
to the maladaptive messages my brain sends I will start to change my brain’s
neurochemistry and I will weaken the intensity of future cravings.

Cravings are lies. In the reattribution phase you
concentrate on telling yourself the truth about what’s really going on.

Step Three: "Refocus"

The third step is a very practical action in any battle
against craving.

Cravings can be strong but fortunately, if you don’t
give in, they tend to go away.

So knowing that, once you’ve relabeled and reattributed the
craving, all you have to do is buy yourself a little time by refocusing your
attention elsewhere for a few minutes.

Say to yourself:

"I am experiencing a craving to do something that I don’t
want to do. Although it feels like I have to give in to this craving I know
this is simply a false message from a brain that isn’t working quite right due
to my addiction (or compulsion). To make it easier for me to choose another
action I am going to refocus my attention by going for a walk for 15 minutes."

In the refocusing step, you engage in an activity that
diverts your attention elsewhere for a specific length of time, say 15 or 20
minutes. The activity should be something that you enjoy doing and which
diverts your attention away from your cravings – exercise of any kind is always
a very good option.3

Step Four: "Revalue"

In this last step you take a moment to remind yourself why
you have chosen not to engage in whatever negative activity you struggle with.

Without deliberate attention and awareness toward truth,
moments of craving cause us to focus selectively on the rewarding aspects of
the behavior we crave and to think very little about the many negative
consequences that in reality accompany the action.

When craving a visit to the casino, you might dream about the
excitement of the game and the way playing helps you to relax and forget your
worries. During a moment of craving you probably do not spend much time
thinking about the financial problems gambling has brought nor about the
humiliation of losing your savings.

So after you have refocused your attention away from the
craving and after the immediate urge wave has crested and subsided in intensity
- take a moment to revalue the source of your craving. Think honestly about what
your gambling or sex addiction - or whatever - has done to your life and think
about what would likely happen if you gave in to your cravings. Remember
specific examples from your last binge or episode and think about the people in
your life you have hurt in the past through your actions.

Practicing the 4 Steps

You are not your addiction. You do not have to listen to
what your addiction tells you to do. You cannot change how your addiction makes
you feel but you can control how you respond to the urges and cravings you
experience – and in the end, it’s what you do that matters.

The four steps can work as a self help program for anyone
battling against behavioral addiction and they may also work well as an adjunct
cravings management program for people with drug or alcohol addictions.

The four steps do not work, however, unless they are
practiced on a daily basis and unless they are practiced in a very conscious
and deliberate way – you need to wrest control away from a brain that’s on
destructive autopilot and you can’t do that unless your mind starts paying
attention to the twist and turns in the road!

References

1.
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with
Addiction, Dr. Gabor Mate, p 337.

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